Regulation

Companies offering smartphone-enabled point-of-sale hardware and software applications are unlikely to capture business from providers of traditional wireless-payment terminals. The more likely outcome is that the two types of wireless devices will compliment each other, with the smartphone-enabled card acceptance attracting small mobile merchants that have avoided purchasing wireless terminals because of the cost, observers say.

Consumers should be allowed to use credit cards to pay for insurance products, Lee Doo-hyung, the new chairman of the Credit Finance Association of Korea, said at his inauguration conference this week.

MasterCard Canada says it plans to adopt the code of conduct for Canada’s debit and credit card industry that the country’s finance minister approved April 16. However, Visa Canada and Moneris Solutions Corp., Canada’s largest payments processor, say they need more time to study the code to determine how it affects their businesses.

An Internet-based payday lender that sold high-interest loans to consumers in Massachusetts at up to 600% interest will no longer be able to do business in the state under a settlement filed by the state's attorney general's office.

Collection law firm Friedman & Wexler LLC, Chicago, is being sued by HSBC Finance Corp. for more than $400,000 in funds that were intended to be held in trust for the bank - but are missing. HSBC hired the firm in 2005 to help it collect outstanding consumer loans. The bank paid the firm 25% of the amount collected.

The U.S. House of Representatives this morning passed H.R. 3506 by voice vote, a move ACA International has supported to eliminate unnecessary paperwork requirements under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA).

National Enterprise Systems (NES) Inc., a collection agency based in Solon, Ohio, agreed to pay an estimated $400,000 to settle charges brought in a lawsuit by Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray's office.

The principal of several New York collection agencies, imprisoned this month after a conviction on gun charges, was released from custody late yesterday on a $250,000 appeal bond.

The New York Attorney General’s office has shut down a Brockport, N.Y.-based process server company that falsely claimed in legal affidavits that its employees had made proper service of legal documents to thousands of consumers.

The FBI last week announced the arrest of eight men, charged with fraudulently using other consumers' credit card information to buy as much as a million dollars in merchandise from stores in Northeast Ohio - including Home Depot, Staples, Best Buy, Lowe's, Macy's, Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue, hhgregg and Sears.